Posted: Sat 17 Mar 2007, 20:28 Post subject:
How to set up a Wacom TabletSubject description: Currently using Wacom driver v0.8.4-4

I just got a Wacom Graphire 4 for my birthday, so I spent a couple hours trying to set it up with Puppy last night. I eventually figured it out, and it's much easier than it seems. Parts of it are different for different computers and tablets, so I can't just make a do-all installer. What I can do is post the only file you need to install, and point you in the right direction for the trickier stuff.

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1.

First, plug in the pad.

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2.

Next, you need drivers. There are two types that you need: a kernel driver and an Xorg driver. The kernel driver needs to be compiled for the specific kernel you use in Puppy (two kernels with the same kernel version, but different options enabled, will each need their own version of the driver). If you have Puppy 4.x, then you already have the kernel driver. This will generally be slightly out of date, but should get the job done. I'll occasionally take initiative and compile the latest version of the driver for the latest version of Puppy. If this isn't good enough for you, you can either head over to the Linux Wacom Project and compile your own driver, or you can post here and tell me which version of the kernel you need the driver compiled for and I'll do it as soon as I get a chance. Be sure to tell me which version of Puppy you use in addition to the kernel number, because sometimes two Puppies will have the same kernel version, but with different options compiled into it.

Legacy packages (pre Puppy 4.1). Note: The following two legacy packages use older versions of the driver and don't include the udev rule (mentioned a ways down this post)
wacom_k2.6.21.7.pet <-- NOT for Puppy 4.1.x Retro
wacom_k2.6.18.1.pet

Note: If you want to use a Bamboo Pen, you will need the newer experimental release, as support has not yet been added to the stable packages. See the bottom of this post for download links.

The Xorg driver is more portable. It should work in just about any Puppy. It will also work even if it's newer than the kernel driver you're using (some of the newer features may be disabled of course). Note that the above packages also contain the xorg driver, so if you use one of them you don't really need this one. However, the two oldest versions above don't contain the Udev rule that makes things simpler. You can install this version over them to get it, or you can install it by hand as described later in this post.

Make sure you do the stuff appropriate for your tablet. For example, mine is a USB Graphire 4, so I did the USB-only stuff, and the parts for stylus, eraser, pad (the buttons on the pad), and cursor (the mouse it comes with). I left out the "ForceDevice" stuff since I don't have a tablet-pc, just a drawing tablet.

You'll notice there are some lines referring to things like "/dev/ttyS0" or "/dev/input/event0". Those are supposed to point to the device file that is associated with your tablet. The problem is that it's a pain to find out which one is right, and then they'll occasionally change between boots if you unplug or plug in new devices, or plug the tablet into a different port. So to simplify things, you can use a udev rule to associate the tablet with /dev/input/wacom no matter where it's plugged in. The latest versions of the packages I've made include this rule. In addition to automatically creating a symlink from the actual device file to /dev/input/wacom, it will also create the actual device file if it doesn't exist yet. (On my system for example, I'd currently need /dev/input/event8, but Puppy doesn't include that, so I used to have to create it by hand).

So instead of "/dev/ttyS0" or "/dev/input/event0", have your xorg.conf file use "/dev/input/wacom".

If you don't have the udev rule (look in /etc/udev/rules.d/ for a file with "wacom" in the name), you can create it easily. Just create the file /etc/udev/rules.d/65-wacom.rules and put this text inside it:

At this point, you should be able to restart X and have the tablet working. You may need to unplug it and plug it back in first, for udev to create the symlink, but I don't believe that is necessary. Once it's working, you're basically done, as far as the Wacom-related stuff goes.

Puppy 4.0 - 4.1.2 users might want to install the GTK package listed here, otherwise Gimp won't recognize the tablet as anything but a mouse. Pre-Puppy-4.0 users don't need this, nor do Puppy 4.2 users (though some 4.2 users may want to grab this version anyway, as the version in 4.2 is incompatible with SCIM):
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=298863#298863
You don't strictly need the DEV, DOC, and NLS packages. If you want to compile stuff you need the DEV one. If you want to use locales you'll want the NLS one. The DOC package is completely optional.

If you try using the fancier things like pressure sensitivity in Gimp, you'll find that they don't work. That's because Gimp also needs configuring. Never fear, very simple. Just go to File -> Preferences in the main Gimp window (the tool-box one). Choose the "Input devices" section and click the "Configure extended input devices" button. Use the dropdowns to enable the parts of your tablet. Then you can use the pressure-sensitivity options in the toolbox to have things like variable opacity or size.

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6.

Okay, now for the absolute final step: Have fun

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Non-udev method:

The following is old information from before we had the udev rule. You don't need this, unless you have a Puppy with no udev at all.

To find the device the tablet is on, you first need to know what type of connection it uses. If you use a serial port, I believe the device file will remain constant - the files correspond to the physical COM ports.

If you use USB, as most people do, it could be pretty much any number - USB hubs let you have obscene numbers of ports. So, that means we need a way to find the number. Run this command:

Code:

cat /proc/bus/input/devices

Find the entry for the Wacom tablet, and a couple rows down it will say something like "H: Handlers=mouse2 event4".

Also, if you have lots of things plugged in, there might not be enough event devices! No worries, we can just make more If you don't have enough (check /dev/input), just do something like this:

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updated 2008-08-26
updated 2008-12-03
updated 2009-04-25
updated 2009-05-22
updated 2009-07-19
updated 2010-02-20_________________Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. --Muad'DibLast edited by Pizzasgood on Sat 27 Feb 2010, 01:58; edited 16 times in total

Wow! Thanks pizza. I had a little play with my wacom tablet a while back without success. I'll try your suggestions.

Drawing with a tablet sure beats a mouse. One by one I'm eliminating all the reasons to retain a copy of Windows on one of my machines. At this rate I'll soon have a totally Puppy household. Yay!_________________A life! Cool! Where can I download one of those from?

A great big thank you to Pizzasgood for posting the info on how to get my aging Wacom tablet working on Puppy, and another to Lobster for posting his details.

At first I couldn't get it working. This was no great surprise to me as I've tried getting my Wacom UD digitiser working on various flavors of Linux over the years with absolutely no success, but on looking carefully at my /etc/X11/xorg.conf file I noticed that I had the ServerLayout stuff duplicating an earlier section in the file (but without the wacom additions). When I moved the lines

into the earlier copy and deleted my duplicate then my graphics tablet magically worked. I didn't need the

Code:

modprobe wacom

command. I did need to set up GIMP properly, but that only took a couple of seconds from within GIMP's own preferences window.

Anybody reading this who is delaying getting their Wacom tablet working on Puppy because of the hassle, please, please take the plunge and do it. You won't be sorry. For far too long I have been frustrated at the lack of responsiveness of my tablet in MSWindows. It bugged me, but I simply gritted my teeth and lived with it because drawing with a mouse is just not even worth considering. Now I find that using the tablet inside Puppy it works exactly the way it always should have!!! My tablet is now an utter joy to use. It is incredibly sensitive and responsive. It fills my drawing with new relaxation and pleasure.

I am very grateful.

(I would like to get the buttons on the side of the pen working but at this point I am so damn delighted with how wonderful my tablet now feels, the buttons are almost irrelevant.)_________________A life! Cool! Where can I download one of those from?

I'd been frustrated by the lack of ability to use my mouse inside GIMP after setting up the graphics tablet. While a tablet is much better for drawing, a mouse is more useful for precision positioning for bezier curves, etc.

Finally, quite by accident, I found that if I right-clicked in a string gadget, any string gadget, in GIMP it brought up a menu. One item of the menu was "Input Methods", which accesses a sub-menu. On choosing "X Input Method" instead of "Default" I found that suddenly I could use my mouse again, as well as the pen. Yay!_________________A life! Cool! Where can I download one of those from?

Cool. Mine has been behaving strangely too, but I could sometimes get it working properly (as another device with it's own tool) by having used both the pen and eraser ends of the stylus and the extra mouse that comes with the tablet. Then the normal mouse would kick back in. But your way sounds much nicer. I'll have to try it out when I get back to the dorm tomorrow night._________________Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. --Muad'Dib

Okay, I found out some useful things the other day. I edited the original post, but I'll also stick them down here so you know which things I added:

I wrote:

Salvation is upon us at last! Instead of trying to guess the event number like I did, just do this:
cat /proc/bus/input/devices
Find the entry for the Wacom tablet, and a couple rows down it will say something like "H: Handlers=mouse2 event4".

Also, if you have lots of things plugged in, there might not be enough event devices! No worries, we can just make more Do something like this:
mknod /dev/input/event5 c 13 69
The 69 is the important part. It's only 69 for /dev/input/event5. /dev/input/event4 will use 68, event6 will use 70, event7 will use 71, etc. I don't know if you can skip events (as in if Puppy has event0 - event5, but you need event7, and you don't make event6). I'd just make all of them up to the one you need, just in case.

That is particularly useful to me, because every time I change my USB layout (even it it's just moving my printer to a different USB port) the event numbers change. So this way I can see what it is without having to mess with wacdump._________________Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. --Muad'Dib

Has anyone here managed to get this to work with the Wacom Bamboo? I have a bamboo, and really would like to use it on my laptop. I really don't have experience with this sort of thing (new to puppy all-together). When I typed in modprobe wacom, nothing happened... the tablet's lit up so it's powered, but the pen isn't moving the mouse.

I kept going anyway, thinking maybe it was just 'cause it's a bamboo, but after downloading the dot-pup, and adding those lines to my xorg.conf (commenting out the stuff for the serial like I assumed I needed to do), saving a restarting, nothing changed. Anyone been able to get this? If so, what did you do?

The good news: It can be done. I just checked The Linux Wacom Project and there's an announcement saying the latest version supports Bamboo.

The bad news: I need to go to sleep now. But tomorrow I can refresh my memory on installing this and update the package with the latest driver. Hopefully that will be enough. Otherwise, I'll help as much as I can, not having a bamboo to test with myself._________________Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. --Muad'Dib

Hey man, thanks a ton . I'm getting more and more impressed by linux in general for these things. My laptop (A P2 with 128mb of RAM) was on it's way to the dump the way it was going, but now it has wireless, puppy, and hopefully soon will have my Bamboo tablet on it! W00t! No rush though, but if you can help that'd be great .

Okay, the reason it wouldn't move after you loaded the wacom driver is that you need the latest kernel module, not just the X driver like I thought. Puppy includes one, but it's not new enough to have support for the Bamboo built in.

The annoying thing about kernel modules is you have to recompile them every time you use a newer kernel. At the moment, there are two main kernel versions in use in the Puppy world: 2.6.18.1 and 2.6.21.7. The former was used in most recent Puppies up to and including 2.16, and also 3.00 retro. 2.17 and 3.00 used the latter. If you're not sure, you can check easily with this command: uname -r

Unfortunately, when I tried compiling it for the 2.6.21.7 kernel it wouldn't work... I don't know why. I'm new to the whole kernel module thing, but as far as I know I did everything right. I installed the development module and the kernel source, but running make would come up with a bunch of errors (yes, I did ./configure --enable-wacom first. I'm new to kernel modules, not compiling).

The module for the 2.6.18.1 kernel compiled flawlessly though. So I'm hoping you have that one

Anyways, if you do, here's the .pet:
http://www.browserloadofcoolness.com/software/puppy/PETget/linuxwacom_krnl_2.6.18.1-0.7.8-3-i486.pet Kernel version 2.6.18.1 only

If anyone has any ideas about what the problem might be, please feel free to comment._________________Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. --Muad'Dib

Okay, I just checked and 4.00's driver doesn't support the Bamboo. I couldn't find an easy way to check which version the driver is, but I noticed I can just cat the driver and locate strings of text for each supported device. The Bamboo wasn't there.

So, I grabbed the kernel source for Puppy 4.00 and the most recent wacom driver and compiled the kernel module. This one does have the Bamboo string in it.

NOTE: I haven't tested this beyond making sure the kernel module actually loads.

NOTE: This is ONLY for the Puppy 4.00 that uses the 2.6.21.7 kernel. It will not work with the 2.6.25 version. (That kernel might already have a new enough driver though; I haven't checked this yet.)

To use this (assuming it works), follow the directions in my first post, but where it says to install the wacom_drv.pup, install this instead. Otherwise everything should be the same.

I highly recommend using pfix=ram to test this without potentially harming your save file. I'll try to test it in the near future.

attachment removed - see first post for a download link_________________Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. --Muad'DibLast edited by Pizzasgood on Tue 26 Aug 2008, 16:20; edited 1 time in total

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